“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” - George W. Bush

Friday, May 30, 2014

"In the cops defense, the baby was holding a rifle, or a rattle that looked like a rifle. This made them mistake the baby for the family dog. Policy calls for shooting dogs in cribs, but after returning fire from the parakeet they were out of bullets, so grenade.” - Dr. No

Habersham County, Georgia, Sheriff Joey Terrell feels bad that his deputies horribly burned a toddler by tossing a "distraction device" (a.k.a. a "flash bang" grenade) into the playpen where he was sleeping during a drug raid on Wednesday morning. "The baby didn't deserve this," Terrell concedes in an interview with AccessNorthGa.com. "The family didn't deserve this. This family was displaced from another home down here and apparently just moved in." If his deputies had known there were children in the home, he says, they would not have used the grenade. But given what they knew, Terrell insists, they acted appropriately:

We keep asking ourselves, "How did this happen?" No one can answer that. You can't answer that. You try and do everything right. Bad things can happen. That's just the world we live in. Bad things happen to good people.

But it turns out Terrell does have an answer:

The person I blame in this whole thing is the person selling the drugs. Wanis Thonetheva, that's the person I blame in all this. They are no better than a domestic terrorist, because they don't care about families—they didn't care about the family, the children living in that household—to be selling dope out of it, to be selling methamphetamine out of it. All they care about is making money.

They don't care about what it does to families. It's domestic terrorism, and I think we should treat them as such. I don't know where we can go with that, but that's my feelings on it. It just makes me so angry! I get so mad that they don't care about what they do. They don't care about the families or the people they're selling to.

It makes me angry too, but in a different way. It makes me angry that Terrell thinks violence is an appropriate response to consensual transactions in which someone exchanges methamphetamine for money (provided that person is not a pharmacist and his customer is not a patient with a prescription). It makes me angry that Terrell sees nothing wrong with sending a heavily armed SWAT team into an alleged meth dealer's home in the middle of the night, which inevitably endangers not only the dealer but anyone else who happens to be there. In Terrell's mind, that is not an act of aggression. It was Wanis Thonetheva who attacked first by agreeing to sell speed to people who wanted it. Hence Thonetheva is a "domestic terrorist," harming an innocent child because all he cares about is making money.

Terrorists, of course, are usually motivated by politics rather than greed. And it was not Thonetheva who sent Alecia Phonesavanh's 19-month-old son, Bounkham, to the hospital with severe burns. One of Terrell's deputies did that, in service of a political ideology that says people may not alter their consciousness in ways that are not approved by the government. "He is in a medically induced coma and he is paralyzed," Phonesavanh told WSB-TV, the ABC affiliate in Atlanta. "I hope he's not going to remember this. I know his sisters, his mommy, and his daddy will never forget this. Our kids have been through enough this year. This is just more trauma that they didn't need, and I just wish there was something better I could do to make it better for him. Wrong place, wrong time."

That place is America, and that time is a period during which police believe it is their duty to launch military-style assaults on civilians who sell politically incorrect drugs, knowing full well that there is bound to be "collateral damage" like this from time to time. After Bounkham recovers from the injuries inflicted by his government and becomes old enough to ask what happened that night, is there any explanation that will make sense to him?

84 comments:

The American Stasi -Allowing weapons to flow to the drug cartels of Mexico.Patrol cars have become armored personnel carriers.

There are images galore that illustrate the 'change' that has occurred, the militarization of the police in the United States in the 21st century. All that stands between the US citizen and tyranny, a jury of their peers.

... possibly 1,000 (civilians) died during the Savannah Campaign at the hands of Union soldiers unlawfully entering their houses to pillage. The 3rd and 4th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit this.

Kathryn Johnston (June 26, 1914 – November 21, 2006)[1] was an elderly Atlanta, Georgia, woman who was shot by undercover police officers in her home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta on November 21, 2006, where she had lived for 17 years. Three officers had entered her home in what was later described as a 'botched' drug raid.[2][3][4] Officers cut off burglar bars and broke down her door using a no-knock warrant.[5] Police said Johnston fired at them and they fired in response; she fired one shot out the door over the officers' heads and they fired 39 shots, five or six of which hit her.[3][6] None of the officers were injured by her gunfire, but Johnston was killed by the officers. Police injuries were later attributed to "friendly fire" from each other's weapons.[2][3][6]

One of the officers planted marijuana in Johnston's house after the shooting.[7][8] Later investigations found that the paperwork stating that drugs present at Johnston's house, which had been the basis for the raid, had been falsified.[3] The officers later admitted to having lied when they submitted cocaine as evidence claiming that they had bought it at Johnston's house.[7] Three officers were tried for manslaughter and other charges surrounding falsification and were sentenced to ten, six, and five years.

The Sean Bell shooting incident took place in the New York City borough of Queens, New York, United States on November 25, 2006, when three men were shot at a total of fifty times by a team of both plainclothes and undercover NYPD officers, killing Sean Bell on the morning before his wedding, and severely wounding two of his friends, Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman.[1] The incident sparked fierce criticism of the police from some members of the public and drew comparisons to the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo.[2] Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial[3] on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment, and were found not guilty.[4]

A new report by the New York Times reveals that the US government is using illegal immigrants detained in detention centers as cheap labor. Sometimes they pay them $1 a day, sometimes not at all. The work is only supposed to benefit the detention centers, but meanwhile immigrants are being used to package meals for prisoners at other jails. Detractors are calling it a hypocritical, unlawful practice that bends many rules on the book. The Resident discusses.

Frivolous lawsuits clogging U.S. courts, stalling economic growthAmericans’ litigiousness and thirst for massive damages has been a boon to the legal profession. But some researchers and litigation experts warn that the abundance of lawsuits—many of them frivolous—flooding U.S. courts is severely weakening the economy.

Exercising your "Rights" is not always the "right" thing to do. It damages society.But so Bob's are so self-centered they do not care about society, they will not sacrifice for their society, it is all about them, not their country.They reject John F Kennedy's mantra.And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, ..

Bob, you are the one that continually speaks of tyrants in the US. Of the need for the citizens to be armed, that the citizens cannot rely upon the Courts to protect them from tyranny. Then when tyranny is described, graphically illustrated, you tell us that it is the fault of the victims, that the police are not terrorists, are not tyrants.

Republican candidates have begun to retreat in recent weeks from their all-out assault on the Affordable Care Act in favor of a more piecemeal approach, suggesting they would preserve some aspects of the law while jettisoning others.

The moves also come as senior House Republicans have decided to postpone a floor vote on their own health-reform proposal — making it less likely that a GOP alternative will be on offer before the November elections, according to lawmakers familiar with the deliberations. The delay will give them more time to work on the bill and weigh the consequences of putting a detailed policy before the voters in the fall, lawmakers said.http://www.washingtonpost.com/newssearch/search.html?st=Republican+candidates+have+begun+to+retreat+&submit=Submit+Query

That is an error, Bob. His replacement, Josh Earnest, is much more capable than Jay ever was.You will be shocked and chagrined by the change in attitude of the Press Corps and the coverage they provide.

Amy Goodman: “Do you think President Bush should be brought up on war crimes [charges], and Vice President Cheney and [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld, for the attack on Iraq?”

Richard Clarke: “I think things that they authorized probably fall within the area of war crimes. Whether that would be productive or not, I think, is a discussion we could all have. But we have established procedures now with the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where people who take actions as serving presidents or prime ministers of countries have been indicted and have been tried. So the precedent is there to do that sort of thing. And I think we need to ask ourselves whether or not it would be useful to do that in the case of members of the Bush administration. It’s clear that things that the Bush administration did — in my mind, at least, it’s clear that some of the things they did were war crimes.”

Horror: Stun grenade tossed by Georgia cops during drug raid lands in toddler’s playpenPOSTED AT 3:21 PM ON MAY 30, 2014 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Share on Facebook 81 131 SHARESIt blew a hole through the side of the ‘pen and “ripped open” the baby’s face, as his mother put it. He’s in the burn unit right now in a medically induced coma. The police swear they had no idea there was a child in the home, a claim supported by the fact that the baby didn’t actually live there. He and his mother were staying in the home after their own house burned down; the alleged drug dealer (who’s unrelated to the boy) lives there and, if the cops’ informant is to be believed, sells meth out of the living room.

Meth’s not the only thing cops expected to find there.

“We had prior information on it,” Terrell said of the circumstances of the home and its occupants. “The individual had been involved in an altercation with another male involving a possible AK-47 [rifle] several months ago, and he was arrested on some weapons charges. Supposedly that was about drugs.”…

“When we did surveillance on the house, there were two guards standing guard at the door … like they weren’t letting anybody in,” Terrell said. “We did make the buy out of the house. We took that information, along with our other information, and went to see the judge and got a warrant.”…

“According to the confidential informant, there were no children,” Terrell said. “When they made the buy, they didn’t see any children or any evidence of children there, so we proceeded with our standard operation.”A local magistrate issued a “no-knock warrant” to raid the house, partly because of the info linking the suspect to “assault-type weapons.” When the cops got there and tried to open the door, they felt something blocking it so they tossed in a flash-bang. The obstacle turned out to be … the playpen, with the baby inside. Here’s a photo of the aftermath, if you can stomach it. The suspect wasn’t even there; they picked him up later at another residence.

Negligence or tragic accident? Patterico, a prosecutor by trade, puts it this way:

Don’t treat this like the cops intended this. They didn’t. When the story says deputies are distraught over this, I believe it. Cops don’t go into law enforcement to hurt small children.

But look: if you use stun grenades in the service of a no-knock warrant like this, tragedies like this are going to happen. The question that police (and members of the public who pay the police) have to ask themselves is this: is it worth this kind of risk to arrest people for the crime in question? If the crime is murder, you might have one answer. If the crime is selling drugs, you might have another.Indeed. What’s the threshold for using a flash-bang sight unseen, knowing that anything and anyone could be behind that door? Selling meth might not meet that threshold, but maybe the possibility of an AK-47 being pointed at you when the door swings open does. What I want to know is, how would they have approached this if they did have reason to believe a child was there? No flash-bangs, obviously, which means a greater risk for the cops, but would you rather have cops take the extra risk or a 19-month-old who’s asleep in his crib? That’s what this case is about. How much extra danger should the police reasonably be expected to expose themselves to in the name of avoiding terrible crossfire accidents like this one?

Exit quotation from the sheriff, guaranteed to inflame supporters and opponents of the war on drugs: “The person I blame in this whole thing is the person selling the drugs… They are no better than a domestic terrorist, because they don’t care about families – they didn’t care about the family, the children living in that household – to be selling dope out of it, to be selling methamphetamine out of it. All they care about is making money.”

The much maligned Frank Rizzo, when he was Philadelphia Police Commissioner changed the color of the cop cars from black and white to blue so that they didn't look so sinister to the public. Who would of dreamed that we would have willingly acquiesced to flying squads of armored paranoid thugs smashing into civilian homes searching for state disapproved chemicals?

A nighttime car chase in Cleveland that ended on a schoolyard where more than 100 shots were fired at the suspect’s vehicle appeared to be over when an officer opened fire again, a prosecutor said in announcing charges against the patrolman and five police supervisors.

Cleveland patrol officer Michael Brelo stood on the hood of the suspect’s car and fired at least 15 shots through the windshield — five fatal — at the two unarmed people inside, Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty said Friday.

McGinty cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week that said police can’t fire on suspects after a public safety threat has ended. He said the other officers on the scene had stopped firing after the November 2012 chase ended.

Researchers at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park estimate more than 3,000 annual teen deaths nationwide from texting and 300,000 injuries.The habit now surpasses the number of teens who drink and drive -- a hazard that has been on a dramatic decline in recent years, researchers say.An estimated 2,700 young people die each year as a result of driving under the influence of alcohol and 282,000 are treated in emergency rooms for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public Schools Cop Shoots At Fleeing Kids Who Had Been MAKING OUTSchool cop said he felt jeopardized by the fact that a confused kid in the midst of a face-sucking session drove away from him

School district officials in Tulsa, Okla. have placed one of the district’s police officers on paid administrative leave because he fired his gun at a vehicle containing a pair of teenagers who were trying to get busy in a car.

The shooting incident happened over the weekend in the parking lot of Eliot Elementary School, reports Tulsa Fox affiliate KOKI.

The unidentified school cop fired at the back of the vehicle as the 17-year-old driver was fleeing the scene, according to the real Tulsa police detectives who later investigated the incident.

The kids in the car were “probably doing something that they shouldn’t have been,” Tulsa police spokesman Chris Payne told KOKI.

Sensing trouble, the school cop approached the vehicle to find out what was happening. Instead of answering the cop’s questions, the driver chose to try to get the hell out of dodge.

The school cop said he felt jeopardized by the fact that a confused kid in the midst of a face-sucking session drove away from him. In response, then, he pulled out his gun and shot at the absconding vehicle, striking it with a live bullet in the rear left tire.

Tulsa police detectives have since been able to track down the teen driver. The kid told the detectives that drove off because he was just trying to leave.

School district officials noted that no one is supposed to make out on school property – or enter school property – outside of school hours.

Payne, the Tulsa Police spokesman, said the school cop was carrying the firearm legally. However, a criminal investigation will determine whether he used it appropriately in this case.“Our police officers are all CLEET certified, so they are real police officers,”

I do a great deal of handgun shooting at a gun club and range frequented by numerous enforcers of the law. With few exceptions, they are poor marksmen. They do, however, throw around a lot of lead quickly, equating volume with lethality.

Police, also, have some terribly self-destructive habits: 1) they herd (one grenade would get them all), 2) the body armor shown in the photo above would not stop rifle rounds, 3) their feet and ankles are vulnerable to any weapon, 4) most head shots with most weapons would prove fatal, 5) the thighs and calves beg for bullets (these appendages bleed out rapidly), and 6) they rely on little organized resistance at the scene, with no resistance on the ride.

While the armored vehicles being given to police departments look impressive, they have no big guns, poor visibility and must be covered by detached infantry. That makes them large coffins accompanied by armed pallbearers.

When all is said and done when the stuff hits the fan, American policemen will act like Egyptian policemen: they will seek shelter in station houses. For American riflemen, that will be a good thing.

A new VA internal audit found wait-list fraud at almost two-thirds of all VA facilities, and that 13% of schedulers had been trained to commit fraud as part of their work. This new audit, which is separate from the Inspector General probe of the Phoenix facility, provided the final straw that forced VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to offer his resignation yesterday:

Appointments’ wait times were manipulated at more than 60 percent of the Department of Veterans Affairs health facilities investigated as part of a new internal audit.

The White House-ordered audit found that schedulers faced pressure to manipulate the system and concluded there was a “systemic lack of integrity within some Veterans Health Administration facilities.”

The audit, issued as VA Secretary Eric Shinseki resigned Friday, found that 64 percent of the 216 VA facilities reviewed had at least one instance where a veterans’ desired appointment date had been changed. The review found 13 percent of schedulers had received specific instructions to misrepresent wait times. …

The review also found that 7 percent to 8 percent of scheduling staff said they used alternatives to the VA’s electronic wait list, a practice that occurred in 62 percent of the facilities examined.This President spent the last several years shrugging off scandals and massive incompetence — Benghazi, the ObamaCare rollout at HHS, Operation Fast & Furious at the Department of Justice, and James Clapper committing perjury in the Senate, just to name a few that resulted in zero firings at any level. This time, though, Obama had no choice, even though he had inexplicably issued two statements of confidence in Shinseki in the previous two weeks. Apparently no one at the White House had bothered to keep up with their own promises to clean up the VA from the 2008 campaign, and got blindsided by the massive corruption that Shinseki allowed to fester:

In other high-profile situations — involving Internal Revenue Service employees targeting Tea Party groups, Secret Service agents partying in foreign countries and the State Department response to the Benghazi consulate attacks in 2012 — Obama also resisted calls from politicalrivals and media pundits to remove top figures.

In some cases, Obama did not believe the agencies involved had made major transgressions, calling the lapses isolated and trumped up by his political rivals.

Even with Shinseki, Obama went to great lengths to defend the retired general, who had been injured after stepping on a land mine in Vietnam, calling him “ a good man . . .an outstanding soldier. . .a champion of our veterans.” And the president emphasized repeatedly that the problems at veterans hospitals preceded Obama’s tenure and that the specific recent examples of wrongdoing “did not surface to the level where Ric was aware or it or we were able to see it.”

But Shinseki was more exposed when influential Democrats began joining Republicans in calling for his ouster, something that did not happen to Sebelius. In her case, the White House and Democrats feared a nasty confirmation fight for a replacement at a time when Republicans were trying to exploit the health-care Web site problems for political gain heading into the midterm election cycle this fall.

By the time Sebelius had departed, the enrollment figures showed that the White House had surpassed its initial goals, blunting GOP criticism.

In Shinseki’s case, the problems inside the VA are far more in­trac­table and will take a lot longer to fix. The latest blow to the general came Friday morning, when Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a former Veterans Affairs official who lost both of her legs while serving in combat in Iraq, urged Shinseki to resign.

“Our first priority should be the veterans, and at this point, whether Secretary Shinseki will stay or go is too much of a distraction,” Duckworth said. “I think he has to go. He certainly loves veterans, but it’s time for new leadership.”Don’t bet on that being the final factor. The audit showing corruption at 64% of VA facilities on an initial and internal audit would have made Shinseki politically radioactive in any context. Shinseki had more than five years to take control of the VA, and the sheer scale of this systemic failure points directly to his incompetence at running the organization. It also points to Obama’s detachment from his own administration again, even on initiatives that Obama himself insists are high priorities for himself.

Next, Congress should insist on conducting its own audit of the VA, probably through GAO. Even with the scale of corruption at the VA registering this high on an internal audit, it’s an easy bet that it’ll be higher in an independent probe of all facilities.

Bob endorsed young US soldiers dying to maintain US control of Afpakistan and Iraq.He has advocated for US soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines dying to keep Iran in line ...... but now he endorses releasing five terrorists to gain the release of a single soldier!

Cops Claim Teen Shot Himself in the Head While Handcuffed in Back Seat of Patrol CarRead more at - http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-claim-teen-shot-head-handcuffed-seat-patrol-car/#5tRbul8tgiKC80kv.99

...“I know that it is hard for people not in law enforcement to understand how someone could be capable of shooting themselves while handcuffed behind the back,” he said. “While incidents like this are not common, they unfortunately have happened in other jurisdictions in the past.”In a statement released at his news conference, Lopez said he anticipated the disbelief.

Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cops-claim-teen-shot-head-handcuffed-seat-patrol-car/#IPF2o2Ox8zJDxvX5.99

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.